Sunset Tree

Some friends of mine moved into a new house just after Christmas and I wanted to make them something for the new house. I found this pattern of a tree silhouette with a sunset in the background and knew they'd love it. Really enjoyed stitching this one. I mixed different colours of thread together to attempt to get the background to blend more. Anyway here's the finished result:

Stop ... Penguin time!

So I'm just getting around to putting up some of the cards I made for Christmas. I refused to buy any cards this year, and made all of the ones I sent out :) I looooove penguins so several of the ones I made were of penguin designs I found in an old issue of Cross Stitcher magazine. Here they are:

Vicki x

Knight in Shining Armour

This was *another* of my Christmas present projects. (Yeh, I'ma bit slow at putting stuff on the internets, only just decided to get a blog for my sewing) My housemate and awesome friend Kitty is a very enthusiastic historical re-enactor, especially of Tudor and Medieval stuffs, and loves jousting and the likes :) I bought a knight on horseback card kit years ago from a castle near my parents house and decided I'd make it for her. Low and behold, when I went through my sewing box to find it had vanished. Annoying times!! So I searched the internets to find a similar design and found this one. I was making lots of Christmas cards at the same time so it took about a month to complete. Once I stitched the one side I flipped the image, and stitched that on the opposite side. I found a letter set on the internet, and used that to stitch the "K" in the middle. I changed the flag design slightly so one was the Lancaster flag, and the other a York flag, to represent the War of the Roses. I found a black frame for it, and some foil fleur de lis thingys and put them in the corner of the mount just to add a little extra to the design. She loved it which was awesomes :D Pictures ahead:

I Has A Boat!

A couple of my friends have left their flat and moved into a canal boat. I went back to visit my parents recently and ended up sorting through loads of my old cross stitching magazines, where I found this beautiful canal boat design. It was just screaming at me to make it for my friends. As one of their birthdays was just before Christmas, I embarked on this rather time consuming project. I started it in May just after I finished University. At that point I hadn't really done any cross stitching at all for three years, so was quite an ambitious project to get back into the swing of things again. It took from May until the start of December to complete, with many stops and starts in between. it was quite challenging at times especially as I have real difficulty seeing differences in red shades, so it all just looked one colour to me! I changed the original design slightly by altering the colour of the boat in the pattern from red to blue, so it would look more like my friends boat, and also changed the person driving the boat to be more like my friend. It really was brilliant watching this colourful design come slowly to life, and I was thrilled by the end result after lots of hard work!! I managed to find a nice frame for it, and went to frame it a couple of days before her birthday and realised that I had no iron with which to straighten out the fabric. So after a quick dash out to find an iron, it was framed and wrapped. She absolutely loved it, and I'm told it takes pride of place in the living room of the boat and makes her smile daily :) I love how you can put a smile on people face with things you make!






Vicki x

Michael Jackson.

For Christmas, due to lack of funds, I decided to make the majority of my present for close friends and family. My cousin is a massive massive Michael Jackson fan, and when browing the world of the internets I found this brilliant silhouette cross stitch design of MJ himself. I knew that I just had to make it for her! Took me two days of pretty much solid sewing to finish, and I love it!! So pleased with how it turned out! I ran out of black half way down his leg and had to run to the craft shop too buy some more, only to find they had sold out of black where wouldnt have any in for A WHOLE DARN WEEK!! This caused major frustration. Who runs out of black thread huh?! Karma was definitely out to get me as every other shop I could think of that would sell the stuff also had none in stock :( So when I got back home, in one of the worst moods ever, I tore apart my craft drawer looking for some scrap of black thread that I may have overlooked. I eventually found some un-opened card kits which had some black thread in, and raided those to finish it! Far to much drama for my liking!! i gave the finished design to my dad, who in turn gave it to his friend who mounted and framed it for me :) Which was very much appreciated! I nipped back to my parents a few weeks before Christmas so I could give my cousin her present myself. She was so happy with it, and cried when she opened it so loved it so much! Definitely made the hard work and drama worth while :) Anyway, here be pictures:




Vicki x